In a region where fiber optic penetration varies dramatically from near-universal coverage in the UAE to emerging markets in other territories, ISPs face unique challenges in expanding their services.
In this interview, York Yue, Vice President of Huawei and President of Huawei ISP Business Unit, offers a nuanced perspective on how providers can navigate these diverse market conditions.
While countries like the UAE boast 99% fiber penetration, the focus here is shifting to indoor Wi-Fi coverage solutions, such as Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7. This evolution, York says, offers improved interference management and performance comparable to mobile broadband, when properly optimized.
For markets outside the GCC, York advocates different approaches based on population density. Urban and suburban areas benefit from traditional fiber-to-the-home solutions, he says, while rural regions may find better ROI through fixed wireless access (FWA).
York cites China’s innovative approach of mandating fiber installation in new residential buildings as an example of cost-effective infrastructure development.
He also points to Huawei’s implementation of artificial intelligence in ISP operations. By deploying AI-driven troubleshooting apps and automated detection systems, ISPs can significantly reduce maintenance costs and improve customer service without maintaining large support centers.
This approach is especially valuable for smaller ISPs with limited resources. Here, York goes on to highlight how Huawei’s AI solutions can help level the playing field for smaller providers while improving service efficiency.
Want to learn more? Tune into the full conversation now!
Mr. Yue, we’re in the Middle East, which generally has lower fiber optic penetration than other parts of the world. Are there specific strategies that you recommend to your ISP customers to grow their customer base and of course to grow their revenues?
One solution is for fiber. One solution is for wireless. But different countries have different situations. For example, in UAE here, the penetration of optical fibers is almost 99%. So, it’s almost the highest penetration worldwide in Dubai. In a hot place like this, people always stay in the indoor area, so how to let people enjoy high-speed internet services indoor is the main point for ISPs. We should think about how to use optical fiber to develop the indoor coverage, especially with F5G. In a lot of areas, the outdoor coverage is very good with 5G and 5.5G. But the indoor coverage still uses 4G, sometimes even 3G. So how can we enable people to enjoy faster internet connection? A better way is to go from fiber to wireless. A very good solution for indoor coverage is fiber to the Wi-Fi.
And what type of Wi-Fi are you using?
As we know, Wi-Fi 4 only has one spectrum — 2.4 GHz. With Wi-Fi 5, we have introduced a new spectrum — 5 GHz. But now, a lot of countries have already introduced Wi-Fi 6. The big advantage is not just they offer high speeds. Advantage is that they have more codec, they have better anti-interference abilities. So, we want Wi-Fi 6 to offer very good coverage and performance, similar to the mobile broadband. We should do some work like network planning and network optimization. It’s quite similar with the mobile broadband. If we operate one network like Wi-Fi, we can get a network performance similar to that of the mobile broadband.
So obviously ISPs are now addressing other markets, not just consumers, but also businesses. What sort of strategies do you recommend to reach that customer base?
For areas outside the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a lot of countries still have very low penetration, such as Pakistan, Iraq, and other countries. If there are urban or suburban areas and still that have no penetration of optical fibers, we can still go to fiber to the home, FTTH. But in rural areas, if we deploy one fiber to some place, maybe this fiber can only take around 5 or 10 subscribers. For operators or for ISPs, maybe after 10 years, or maybe more than 20 years, they still cannot get money back. In these places, we thought a good solution is FWA, fixed wireless access. So, in different scenarios, we should adopt different solutions.
So, what’s the payback period for FWA versus installing fiber optic in the ground?
Oh, it depends. In China, in 2014, the government introduced a regulation. They asked that all new residential apartments should put optical fibers inside before you sell. If you don’t have optical fibers inside, you don’t have the permission to sell. And these fibers should be open to all operators. So, it can be very fast to increase optical fiber penetration. Because optical fiber itself does not take so much money. The major cost lies in implementation. But if one building is under construction or if one building is being repaired, the implementation cost of fiber is nothing.
So, from this point, we see that in GCC countries, the big business is Wi-Fi indoor coverage. Outside the GCC, for urban and suburban coverage, we should think about how to have more optical fibers deployed and how to develop more optical fiber subscribers; and for rural coverage, we think about using FWA.
That’s clever, isn’t it? Because it just becomes another utility like plumbing or electricity.
It’s about using different strategies. It is just to lower the cost to deploy the optical fiber network. But how to get the revenue is another issue.
ISPs should think about not only using this optical fiber to get revenue from the B2C (business to consumer) sector. They can also think about how to get revenue from enterprises, especially SMEs, small and medium-sized enterprises. Because after the pandemic, it looks like all the businesses, all the enterprises have set up several offices. So how can we enable people to work smoothly together? You don’t mind to pay for the internet, but you want to guarantee the quality.
Let’s talk about even newer technologies, artificial intelligence. Is that something that you’re helping your customers to deploy?
Yes. Artificial intelligence right now is a hot topic in the industry. So, we try to help our customers adopt this artificial intelligence to make the network more efficient. For example, for ISPs, one of the biggest costs for their business is troubleshooting.
Because for some ISPs, they are not like the big operators. They (big operators) have a huge customer care center; they have many maintenance people. So, when their users are having complaints, “Oh, my network is down. My coverage is not so good.” Also, maybe “My Wi-Fi is not so good.” In this case, they send people to help with troubleshooting or after-sale services. (But for ISPs) They need to pay additional money for some outsourcing companies. Sometimes they even have to hire some customer care centers.
Right now, we are cooperating with some ISPs. We try to do things like everything being autonomous. For example, I’m one subscriber. I use one ISP’s services. We have developed one app in the mobile phone. If we find the network is not working, this app will automatically detect problems. Firstly, do you have any problem with your account? Maybe you just forgot to pay the money. Secondly, we will check, how about the fiber? Maybe the fiber is broken. It’s not an accident in your home, but maybe in this region. So, the third step is that we go to check, okay, maybe your router or something has a problem. And the fourth step, we find out maybe only your ONT has a problem.
So, these things can be automatically done by some apps. This report can be collected by one maintenance person directly, but it’s not enough. Right now, we are also cooperating with some ISPs to develop some tools for automatic detection. For example, just now I mentioned the new business is in B2B and MSP. What if we start new business in B2B and MSP, but we cannot do the troubleshooting? So, a better way is that we use automatic detection. Maybe, every day, we run automatic detection. How is the Wi-Fi coverage? How about the speed? Is it good or not good? If not good, okay, the automatic tool analyzes (the problem).
So, it’s operating fully autonomously. That’s remarkable.
